Phantom Pain
by khruangbin
Summary: Tawnyfur is a disillusioned young ShadowClan warrior in a forest on the brink of war. The night of the Gathering, she slips off a fallen tree and is killed. And then she starts the night of the Gathering over again, and dies. And then again, and again, and again.
1. The Night Before a Gathering

PHANTOM PAIN.

ONE.

Ugh.

The night before a Gathering.

Everyone always loses their minds about it, but I'm here staring at my reflection in a rain puddle and wondering if I can make myself throw up so I don't have to go.

I'm standing staring at my face in the puddle with the image of the trees over my head silhouetted by the setting sun. I just went out for a drink of water, and then a drink of water turned into an hour, looking at myself, looking back at me. I stab it with my paw to disturb the reflection and it morphs into chaotic ripples.

I'm maybe two fox-lengths out of camp, but I can hear through the thickets how excited everyone is to go to this forest-wide gathering of monumental importance. They're all going to be making these huge important decisions about the futures of our Clans and our livelihoods once it's over. Yay.

When I turn around I get my back paw stuck in a thicket torn lose from the camp's exterior barrier so I have to sit and wrestle it loose. I've got something wrong with that back leg there, have for a while now. It's sort of a paint deep in the joint where it meets the rest my body.

I'll tell you, I'm a young cat. I've only been a warrior for about six months now. Old enough to have my own apprentice, finally, but not old enough to feel like I'm much more than an apprentice myself. I'm not some elder nursing my sore joints who can't clean her own bedding. Yet I've got this pain anyway, somehow, for at least a moon now. It's not killing me. I figured I can eventually use it to get out of doing something I don't want to do someday.

Thicket-free, I head for the camp entrance and two warriors nearly trample me leaving camp. "Hey, Tawnyfur!" One of them says to me. Briarmouth. He swishes his tail. "We were just going to go grab something before we lave, you want to join?"

"Pass," I say. I always pass on hunting with this guy. Got a mouth like a rabid badger. "Pick me up a vole, though!" And I duck past them into the camp.

Ugh. Too many cats. Cats everywhere. Just emerging through the briar tunnel is like getting hit by a wave of sound. All the meowing and blabbering. Heatherstar is regally passing to the leader's den with her head held high and three of her senior warriors flanking her. I swish my tail at her with a smile, but she doesn't see me. Figures. I steel my way through the center of camp, my eye on the medicine cat's den, halfheartedly greeting my other Clanmates on the way. My brand new apprentice, Snowpaw, waves both her tail and her claws at me from the other side of camp, playfighting with the other apprentices outside of their den, and I sheepishly return the greeting, but I hope she doesn't come bounding over to me. Rats, she's going to want to spend the entire Gathering at my side tonight. I'm going to have to muster the energy from someplace. StarClan knows how.

"Tawny! Tawnyyyy!"

Before I reach the medicine cat's den I'm intercepted by Shallowtail skidding I front of me, trembling about, wiggling with excitement, slapping me with her tail. "Tawn!" She says. "You look like someone threw crowfood on you! Not like – you _look_ bad – just like you look_ bad_, because you look sad or something." She pulls a frown. "Why so sad?"

"Oh, I'm not sad," I meow in a long and drawling voice, "I think it's just the absolute dire importance everyone treats these Gatherings with that kind of bring me down, you know? Like oh, good, let's all get excited to race to a distant island with a bunch of cats who hate each other – and look! It resolved nothing. Hurrah."

"There could be a _war_," Shallowtail observed seriously, innocently. "I think it's important to try to resolve things, even if it doesn't work."

"Yeah, sure." I say. I continue for the medicine cat's den.

"Oh, come on!" She dashes after me. "Let's stay up after we get back and do something fun tonight!"

"Fun? Like what?"

"I don't know, let's climb the tallest tree in the forest or something! We haven't done that since we were apprentices."

Shallowtail and I, we go all the way back to the nursery together. Everything makes Shallowtail excited. Even the prospect of forest-wide warfare doesn't dampen her sprits.

"Sure, why not." I say. "Listen, I've got to pop in and see Blackwing really quick, but after that I'll catch up to you, okay? Let's eat something, I think Briarmouth's bringing me a vole. We can share." I offer a toothy smile.

"Why do you have to see Blackwing?" She folds her ears with concern. "The leg?"

"Yep, the leg." I stretch it out to show her. "I wouldn't say it's getting worse, but it's not getting better either. Here's hoping I can score some of those poppy seeds again…" Another toothy smile offered. "Wish me luck?"

"For the poppy seeds, or your leg feeling better?" Shallowtail pouts. "Oh! Oh! Oh! I forgot to tell you, Heatherstar talked about you, she wanted to see you I think." She lazily licks part of her leg. "She didn't sound mad or anything."

"Oh – good." I say. "Okay, I will think about that after I've gotten my much-needed dose of poppy seeds. Thank you Shallowtail. Love you."

"Love you, Tawny!" She meows, and then somersaults over herself running off. "Good luck!"

I nose my way into Blackwing's den with a low, "hellooo?" because it's so dark in there. While my eyes are still adjusting, I'm greeted by a soft, herb-smelling paw lightly against the side of my cheek.

"Tawnyfur." a voice whispers. It's Thistlepaw, Blackwing's apprentice. My eyes adjust and I see the round, wide-eyed face of this calico little apprentice.

"Okay, hi there, Thistlepaw," I say, removing her paw with my own. "Is Blackwing around?"

"She's in the back, treating Greenwhisker. He still has that sdder bite festering."

"Ouch," I say. I kind of forget how to offer condolences for a moment. It's Greenwhisker's own fault he developed an appetite for lizard and now goes hunting for them where adders live. "Listen, if Blackwing's busy…it's just my leg, it's hurting again, if you could just give me some poppy seeds I could eat and dip…"

"Blackwing!" Thistlepaw yowls, breaking her former pal of silence. "Blackwing, Tawnyfur needs poppy seeds!"

I follow her deeper into the den. Smells like medicine in here and it's just assaultive. Everything these medicine cats do is smelly. Even_ they_ kind of smell. If it wasn't for those treasured poppy seeds, I'd never set foot in here. In the back, Blackwing is bent over Greenwhisker's orange form, he's sprawled lazily in the back, his cobweb-wrapped paw stuck straight in the air. Blackwing comes to greet me with a nose touch. A nose touch, that's what Thistlepaw needs to learn. No need to lay her yarrow-covered paw on my face.

"Tawnyfur," Blackwing says softly. "Come lie down, I have a nest for you."

"No – no, it's really just the poppy seeds I need…"

"Well, let me check out that leg first. Lie down." Both medicine cats guide me to the nest, and I begrudgingly lie down on bedding that smells amazingly clean. Maybe they had to replace it because whoever lay before me made accidental dirt in there or something. Ugh. Blackwing uses her paw on my flank to push me onto my side, and then noses about my sore leg.

"Does it hurt like that?" She eases it out straight. "No" I say. "How about that?" Pulling it into the air. "No…" "How about that?" She pulls it backward. I yelp in pain, almost kick her off of me. I can't help it. StarClan almighty, that hurt.

"Could be muscular." Blackwing mumbles. "I'm sorry, Tawnyfur. I wish I had a better answer for you with this one. My best recommendation is you stay here and rest for at least a week."

"But I can't do that," I say. "I can't lie around the medicine cat's den for a week while my phantom pain heals. What will Heatherstar think of that? And it's not even like I've got some glorious battle wound, or any real wound at all, actually, it's just this…pain."

"A phantom pain." Blackwing agrees, nodding with empathy, looking lowly into my eyes. "Try not to stress it if you can. Here's some poppy seeds for you…" she has them tucked into a ball of dew-soaked moss, I lick the whole thing off eagerly. "If it still hurts, come back tomorrow for more."

"Okay." I say.

"Are you going to the gathering tonight?" She asks me.

"Yeah." I say. "I mean I have to. And Snowpaw's dying to go…so I don't have a choice."

Blackwing sits down patiently. Observing me. "Why don't you want to go so bad? What is that about?"

"I can't be the only ShadowClan cat that isn't hot on attending Gatherings."

"You're the only one I know." Blackwing says. "It worries me a little."

"You don't need to worry about me," I say. "I think I'm just going through something right now. I think it's the war. Or the potential of war. You know, growing up my whole life in a forest that's seen almost entirely peace, and now it's like…"

"Are you afraid to fight?"

"I'm not afraid…I'm just…" I'm moving to begin sitting up in the nest, begin leaving. Don't want to get too deep with Blackwing here. "I think my leg just hurts, really."

"There are other ways to be in pain, too." Blackwing says. She's still sitting. I'm standing.

"Yeah, well." I say. "Thanks as ever for the poppy seeds. You keep a she-cat living, Blackwing. Next time." And I shimmy out of there pretty fast.

The camp outside is even more crowded than it was before. Shallowtail is chattering eagerly with Sunwing, this pale-orange tom with the whitest paws and the whitest belly and the greenest eyes. I'm pretty sure they're becoming mates. Well, Shallowtail thinks they're becoming mates. Brackenclaw is with them too. He waves his tail exactly. Brackenclaw thinks _we're_ becoming mates. I think. I guess in a way we are. I don't know how most cats our age would define it. I like the warmth of sleeping beside him in the den, but then all the other stuff…joining me on patrols, always asking to go hunting, trying to schedule our training-sessions at the same time…I mean I know I'm supposed to love it, Shallowtail loves it when Sunwing does that with her, but truth be told I think I'd rather do it all alone.

Shallowtail waves her tail at me eagerly and stands up like she's about to dash through the camp to join me, but I nod at Heatherstar's den, and roll my eyes for good measure. She gives me one of her telltale grimaces: "good luck!" Shallowtail loves saying "good luck" to you. Now that's a she-cat who really believes in luck. Her mother told her that when she and her litter were born, she was the only one of four born in a perfect ray of sunlight filtering through the nursery's walls. Bathed in sunlight, she was. Shallowtail calls this her "luck". "It's watched over me my whole life!" She'll say. Every prey she's ever caught – luck. Befriending Sunwing, Sunwing asking her to hunt by the border – luck. That time she fell out of a pine tree trying to catch a magpie but landed on the one hidden patch of wildflowers instead of the craggy rocks surrounding it – all luck.

It's got to be nice, believing in luck, I think. If you imagine your life is up to luck and really out of your hands, I mean there's nothing to fear, then. Not really. It's out of your hands.

I cross to Heatherstar's gloomy den and wait outside. I know she can see me out there waiting, but then I get impatient and slap my tail against the stone until her nose pokes out of the dark. "Tawnyfur," she says. "I'm glad you're here."

"Hi mom." I say.

I duck into her den after her. It smells like squirrel in here. For good reason – she's still in the process of eating one. "Want to share?" She offers me.

"Nah." Feels weird eating with my Clan leader, even if she's my mother and all. Plus, I feel sick. Those poppy seeds kill my appetite.

"Well." She says. She turns in one spot in her den. "You look glum."

"What? That's crazy," I laugh. "I feel great. Gathering tonight!"

"Gathering tonight." Heatherstar looks so somber. "Tawny, dear, if this Gathering doesn't go well diplomatically, this could be the end of the peaceful agreement we've maintained for over two generations now."

"So just let – WindClan and RiverClan figure it out." I say. I pick at something between my toes. "How are you, mom? How's life whisking around with those four burly toms of yours all the time?"

"You could be one of my advisors too, someday, if you wanted." Heatherstar says wryly. She picks a bit of squirrel off the bone and watches me.

"Mm, that will definitely happen." I say.

"I'm worried about this glum attitude of yours." She says.

"Oh StarClan!" I laugh. "You are the second cat today who has called me glum! Glum. How am I glum?" I smile as big as I can.

"Because you're unmotivated, you're withdrawn, you eat way more than you hunt, you don't like patrolling, or even heading to the borders, you sleep way too long, your apprentice has complained to my deputy about how poor her training is going, and most of all Tawnyfur, because of the way you talk."

"Which is?"

"Negative. It's negative."

"I'm not negative!" I implore. I forgot why I came in here. "I'm just – going through something, or something. Okay? Mom? Why did you want me to come talk to you?"

"I have a proposition for you." She spits out a bone. She's kind of a gross eater.

"Sure."

Heatherstar lowers her voices now, and lies down on her side so her sandy flank is glowing faintly. "Depending on how tonight's Gathering goes, Tawnyfur, ShadowClan will probably be allying with RiverClan against WindClan's injustices."

"You're saying…war?"

"Yes, we will be going to war." She sighs. "This isn't a decision that I've made quickly or lightly. But I'm coming to believe it's the right thing to do to help those cats. I know it will be violent, I know that we will lose lives."

"Oh, good."

"But, since you are my daughter, and I know you aren't wanting to go into battle, I'm prepared to offer you something."

"What?"

"If you so choose, I won't command you to join the frontlines in battle. You can stay behind and hold down the camp and focus on hunting."

"Really? Why?"

"Because I don't want to drive us farther apart."

I sigh for a long time and dip my head. "Mom, listen."

"No, Tawnyfur." She says. "I would hope that you would choose to fight and choose the good of this Clan, but I also don't want to build resentment between us by forcing you to do that."

"Great, so I suck as a warrior." I say. "Okay. I'll think about that. Good. Bye, mom."

I leave her den in an awful mood and smelling all over from that stinky squirrel she was poking at. Having your mom be your Clan leader is pretty tough. As a queen, and as deputy, it was a different dynamic with us, but then she became leader. It used to be easier, is all I'm saying. And I miss it.

Maybe it would be different having her as Clan leader if things in the forest weren't so tense right now. Six moons ago, or so, WindClan's age-old leader finally passed, and his deputy, Mousestar, took his place. Ever since then, it's gone straight downhill. Mousestar immediately tightened borders, to the point that WindClan wouldn't even let RiverClan medicine cats pass through their territory on way to the Moonpool. That really set something off between those two Clans. It wasn't war or anything, but it was border skirmishes for sure. And then a WindClan cat was killed. Pushed into the river, by a RiverClan warrior. Since then, WindClan had poached two of their warriors. Pacing, guarding that border day and night. It had turned bloody. It was an unavoidably growing problem now.

I find Shallowtail by the fresh-kill pile with Sunwing waiting to leave. Other cats have begun lining up to leave, bathed in the moonlight overhead, patient watching the moon rise so they can leave, and quiet now. The mentors are hushing their apprentices and the most unruly kits have been shepherded back into the nursery. Shallowtail and Sunwing are cuddly – sharing a mouse together, cleaning food off of each other's mouths, acting as adorable as their kits will probably be. I sit down with them, and it takes a moment for Shallowtail to pull herself from Sunwing to greet me.

"What did Heatherstar want?" She asks.

"Just…motherly stuff." I say.

I feel the tap of a tail on my shoulder behind me, and look around. Oh. It's Brackenclaw. He lowers his eyes, his whiskers twitch invitingly. "Hey Tawnyfur."

"Hey…Brackenclaw." I say. I sit up a little. "How was your day?"

"Good. Uneventful patrol." He sits down with me and hooks a vole. "You want to share?"

"Uneventful is good." I say, with as much energy as I can muster. Shallowtail is watching the both of us with a silly expression. "And no, thanks, I'm full."

"You're never full." Shallowtail says.

"Shh!" I shush her. "Um, anyway. Brackenclaw. You're going tonight, right?"

"I'm coming." He says. "What do you think's going to happen with Mousestar there?"

"It's going to be horrible." I roll my eyes. "All that hatred and vitriol – not just him, but Fallenstar, too, and then the rest of RiverClan. Peaceful gathering of all four Clans? StarClan's dreaming!"

"You shouldn't take StarClan's name like that." Sunwing says blankly. Great. "What if you died tonight, and that was the last thing you said about them?"

"Oh, whatever." I stand up. "They aren't listening to me."

"Jeez! Shhh!" Shallowtail whips her tail against the dirt. "You're attracting bad luck."

"Are you leaving?" Brackenclaw asks, watching me stand and back away from their group.

"I'm just going to find Snowpaw for the Gathering." I mumble. I amble across the camp, and I can feel all three of them looking for me. I shouldn't have said that thing about StarClan. That's one of my problems; I say something I shouldn't just because I want to see if I can. It's like Sunwing said, it's going to kill me someday.

Snowpaw must have been watching me approach from inside the apprentice den, because she bursts out and bounces up to me, giggling at her apprentice friends left behind who weren't invited tonight. "Are we leaving now? Are we leaving now?" She's jumping all around. "Am I doing okay? Do I look okay?"

"You look great, but you have to settle down." I say. "You can't go bounding off to the island like that, you'll fall off the tree and break your neck."

"Oh StarClan, I hope not." She settles down immediately. By the fresh kill pile, my friends are lining up together, and Shallowtail swishes her long silver tail at me. She wants me to join them again. I arrive at their sides just as Heatherstar emerges from her den, and with a silent cue, nods toward the camp entrance.

Shallowtail, Snowpaw, Sunwing, Brackenclaw and I take up the end. I'm usually at the end. My heart is sinking as we leave the camp and charge across our territory. Dried leaves snapping under our paws. Twigs breaking. Owls calling from the trees around us with mild interest, the flickering interruption of bats, the full moon zigzagging through the branches overhead, intermittently flashing us in its deathly silver light, illuminating us, my motley Clan, my friends, my apprentices, and then me, all the way the rear.

"Shallowtail told me that you guys are going to climb trees after we get back." Brackenclaw falls behind to keep in pace with me. His voice is low so nobody hears, but his orange eyes bore into mine with that sultry, too-interested quality that, to be honest with you, really puts me off. I know he's trying, but if he only_ realized_ his eyes looked like that…

"Mind if I get in on that?" He asks.

I look at his dark brown tabby coat distantly, regard him from far away in my own mind. "Yeah sure. It'll be fun."

"Good. Sounds exciting. I'd like to watch you climb some trees. I want to see if you're as strong as you look."

I roll my eyes a little bit. This tom. How am I supposed to like him and make him a mate when he _says _things like that? "Surprise, buddy." I hear myself say. "I'm actually really weak. Watch me, I'm not even going to make it across the fallen tree to the island."

"I very much doubt that." He narrows his eyes, smirks, and runs ahead, tracing the length of my pelt with his tail tip the whole time.

When we reach the marshes outlining the island, completely bathed in moonlight now that we're out on the island, I can smell that WindClan has already passed through here. They must already be waiting on the island. Probably got here early to scope everything out. Ugh. Why does this type of stuff have to happen? Like I'm so sick of it, and I haven't even experienced it yet. War. We're going to go to war. I can see Heatherstar's lithe, supple body at the front, tensed and confident, issuing orders, consulting with her deputy, surveying the forest around her. War. We're going to war. I'm going to fight. I'm going to bleed. Someone's going to bleed because of me. They're going to die. My friends are going to die.

I could die.

War.

My leg hurts. Crowfood phantom pain.

ThunderClan arrives as my Clan is beginning to cross the tree to the island, and they wait in elegant order behind us, allowing us to cross first. ThunderClan. We're friends. Sort of. Things could be a lot worse, I guess. Some of their warriors are greeting our warriors from the across the narrow marsh that separates us. While I'm watching this, waiting to cross last of all, I notice a certain warrior on the edge there. A smoky-black tom with a single white paw.

Oh. I get a rush. Looking at this guy. The moonlight is making silver ripples along his smoky coat, his lithe muscles. He's thinner than some of the other warriors, his fur is sleeker, there's a slinky narrowness to him, but StarClan. I can't stop looking.

He notices me too. He watches me. That's all he does, he watches me.

I'm thinking very hard about how I could find him and approach him once we're on the island and find out his name, just his name, that's all I want, but then the darkness of this reality I'm chasing descends over me in one blow. The _name?_ Of a ThunderClan warrior? What kind of mousebrain am I? I mean, this is just the type of thing I do. And Brackenclaw is sitting right next to me, his brown fur flush against mine, offering warmth, and I'm still letting my evil eye stray over this ThunderClan cat over there. The last thing the forest needs is some scandalous, life-ruining affair between a dismal ShadowClan cat and whoever that warrior is.

I must be a really bad cat.

Brackenclaw leaves my side to climb aboard the fallen tree. Instead of watching him cross safely, I watch the ThunderClan tom instead. He's quiet. He's pensive. He's silver in the moonlight.

I look away. I jump neatly onto the tree and land on all fours. My sore lag snags on something, slips, grabs a spindly branch which snaps and breaks and destroys my footing, and then my entire body twists, turns, and spins off the tree trunk.

Beneath me is shallow, murky water, and a dead branch of the tree protruding dramatically from the water. I twist onto my back, twisting, in disbelief and trying to right myself, and I land on the branch. It smacks into the back of my head. It breaks my neck.

I somehow know I'm dying, quickly, facedown, in the shallow puddle of filthy water smelling my blood mix with the water I'm soaking in.

Ugh.

The night before a Gathering.

Everyone always loses their minds about it, but I'm here staring at my reflection in a rain puddle and wondering if I can make myself throw up so I don't have to go.

I'm standing staring at my face in the puddle with the image of the trees over my head silhouetted by the setting sun. I just went out for a drink of water, and then a drink of water turned into an hour, looking at myself, looking back at me.

I'm going to stab it with my paw to disturb the reflection.

But then I don't.


	2. I think I'm Dead

PHANTOM PAIN.

TWO.

I feel weird. I feel_ really_ weird.

I'm looking at myself in this puddle, and I was going to stab it with my paw to disturb the reflection and make my face go away.

So that's what I finally do.

I'm maybe two fox-lengths out of camp, but I can hear through the thickets how excited everyone is to go to this forest-wide gathering of monumental importance. They're all going to be making these huge important decisions about the futures of our Clans and our livelihoods once it's over. The Gathering. Of course.

My back paw is stuck in a thicket or something torn lose from the camp's exterior barrier and I've walked almost to the camp entrance before I notice it snagged in my fur and dragging in the leaves and dirt. I have to sit down to work on pulling it out, because I've got this pain in my back leg where it's snagged. It's sort of a deep pain in the joint where it meets the rest of my body.

I'll tell you, I'm a young cat. I've only been a warrior for about six months now. Old enough to have my own apprentice, finally, but not old enough to feel like I'm much more than…

Or whatever.

When I'm sitting on my bottom wrestling with this enormous rotten thicket, two warriors burst out of the camp entrance and almost slam into me. "Hey, Tawnyfur!" One of them says to me. It's Briarmouth. He gives me a friendly old tail-swish. "We were just going to go grab something before we leave, you want to join?"

"Uhhhhhhhhhhh." I say. I'm just still fighting this thicket. "What?"

"We're going hunting." Briarmouth says. "You hungry?"

"You know, pass." I say. This guy's got a mouth like a rabid badger. "Pick me up a vole, though." I couldn't be less hungry. I thought I was hungry. But I'm not. I can't remember if I'm hungry, actually. StarClan, I feel so weird.

I kick the thicket away from me at long last like it's something rotten, and wander down into camp.

I'm moving pretty slow, but ugh. Too many cats. Cats everywhere. Just emerging through the briar tunnel is like getting hit by a wave of sound. All the meowing and blabbering. Heatherstar is regally passing to the leader's den with her head held high and three of her senior warriors flanking her. I'm going to swish my tail at her as a hi, but I know she's not even going to see me.

I've got to get some poppy seeds for this leg of mine. I think that's what I'm doing. I think something might have happened to me just now. When I was sitting out there looking at my face in the puddle, but I have no idea what it could have been. There's this Gathering coming. That's what everyone's so buzzed about. Right…

"Tawny! Tawnyyyy!"

Before I reach the medicine cat's den I'm intercepted by Shallowtail skidding in front of me, trembling about, wiggling with excitement, slapping me with her tail. "Tawn!" She says. "You look like someone threw crowfood on you! Not like – you _look_ bad – just like you look_ bad_, because you look sad or something." She pulls a frown. "Why so sad?"

"Shallowtail." I say. I look, very slowly, all the way around the camp in a steady circle, and then I face her very close, very serious. I mean I really need this flighty she-cat to look right at me, and only at me, for once. "I don't remember what I was just doing."

"What do you mean?" She chirps. "You went out for a drink of water because you said drinking soaked moss was a good way to purge and nothing more." She wrinkles up her face. "I mean I thought that was kind of weird thing to say."

I'm gazing at the exit from camp. "I just ran into Briarmouth and Reedpelt at the camp entrance, but I feel like that already happened to me."

"Yeah, those two are always running out to 'grab' something for dinner." Shallowtail wiggles about in one spot. "Like, what are they even doing out there? You know? Alone in the forest together…"

"No, no, no, no," I am laughing at her. I'm not sure what I'm laughing at. "I mean I already talked to them just like that and – and I already talked to you!"

"Whaaaat?" Shallowtail meows.

"My leg hurts." I say.

"Oh no, is it getting worse?"

"I have to go get some poppy seeds." I decide. I practically run to the medicine cat den. Shallowtail is calling, "Tawny, wait! Wait!" Behind me.

I nose my way into Blackwing's den, and it's so dark in there. While my eyes are still adjusting, I'm greeted by a soft, herb-smelling paw lightly against the side of my cheek.

"Tawnyfur." a voice whispers. It's Thistlepaw, Blackwing's apprentice. My eyes adjust and I see the round, wide-eyed face of this calico little apprentice.

"Where's Blackwing?" I ask.

"She's in the back, treating Greenwhisker…"

"He has an adder bite!" I say. "But it's his own fault he developed an appetite for lizard and now goes hunting for them where adders live."

"He can _hear _you." Thistlepaw whispers.

"Listen, I'm just going to…" and then I shove straight past her. Poor she-cat. She's got the social skills of dry algae. StarClan, it smells in here. Smells like medicine. Everything these medicine cats do is smelly. Even_ they_ kind of smell. Oh, I feel so weird. "Blackwing!" I say.

Blackwing is bent over Greenwhisker's orange form, he's sprawled lazily in the back, his cobweb-wrapped paw stuck straight in the air. Blackwing comes to greet me with a nose touch, but then I lean away from her, I lean really far away. "Whoa…" I say. "…whoa…"

"Are you okay?" Blackwing asks.

I look around the entire den. I see Greenwhisker half-asleep on his back and his foot in the air. I point my entire paw at Blackwing. "I need some poppy seeds."

"Why?"

"My leg." I kick it out. "My leg hurts."

"Come lie down, I have a nest for you."

"No, you don't need to pull my leg around. It only hurts when you pull it backward…" I stretch my leg for her, standing in one spot. "See that?" I stretch it too hard and a pain like fire stabs all the way through my body into my brain. I almost fall over, and, overwhelmed by pain and how absolutely-profoundly terrified I feel, I'm flooded by agony and emotion. "Why does my leg hurt?" I'm begging.

"Tawnyfur – on no." Blackwing stoops beside me, and caresses me with both of her paws. "Lie down, let me look at that leg. It looks like it's gotten a lot worse?"

"No, it's not my leg." I say. "My leg hasn't gotten worse. My leg is the _same_. It's the same that it _was."_ I'm babbling. Both Blackwing and Thistlepaw are staring at me raptly, and so is Greenwhisker even, upside down in his nest. "Do you ever feel like you're repeating something you've already lived before?"

"Yes." Blackwing says. "It's a phenomenon that happens frequently for cats with a heightened connection to StarClan. It's happened to me any times, as a medicine cat."

"So like you really already experienced something, and it's happening to you all over again?"

"No, it's more recollection of certain key events, like watching from the outside."

"But I'm not on the outside." I'm peering all around the den under their scrutiny. "All I feel is empty." I spring up suddenly, as suddenly as my leg allows. "I have to go get ready for the Gathering."

"What about your leg?" Blackwing says, and her voice escalates quickly in volume because I'm leaving so quickly. "Do you want some poppy seeds?"

I skid to a stop and turn around all of a sudden. I point at her again. "It's phantom pain." I say. "I can't do anything about my leg. It's phantom pain."

The camp outside is even more crowded than it was before. I've never been more confused in my entire life. Shallowtail is chattering eagerly with Sunwing, this pale-orange tom with the whitest paws and the whitest belly and the greenest eyes. I'm pretty sure they're becoming mates. Well, Shallowtail thinks they're becoming mates. Brackenclaw is with them too. He waves his tail exactly. Brackenclaw thinks _we're_ becoming mates. I think. Actually, I don't care what this tom thinks. I don't like him at all. It's all pretending._ "I'd like to watch you climb some trees. I want to see if you're as strong as you look."_ Stupid. Foxdung. Strictly for the birds. I decide I'm not even going to go over there because I don't want to get close to that guy.

Shallowtail, though, waves her tail at me eagerly and gets up to dash through camp to join me. "Tawny!" She calls. She skids in a puff of dirt at my side. "Hey, you should come chat with me and Sunwing, Brackenclaw is there." She shivers in excitement, like she's living through me or something.

"No way, that guy is the worst." I say. "He's disgusting, Shallowtail."

"Whaat? I thought you really liked him! What about that trip to the lake you guys went on? You were so happy after."

"Yeah, the lake was fun." I say. "It was fun. It was fun that he did nothing but spend the entire time showing off how he could hunt as well as a RiverClan cat, and then the one he caught for the two of us was like eating a bunch of pine needles. But you know what? I don't care. I don't care if he actually sucks at hunting, or anything like that. I don't need a mate who is any of those things. I would never have said this out loud, but last night, the stuff he said when we were walking to the Gathering…"

"What Gathering? Last moon?"

"No – just – last night. About climbing the trees and stuff. You know what, Shallowtail, I'm having a really weird night, okay? I think something might have happened to me – like something really big happened, and I'm not sure what's going on. I have to go talk to Heatherstar, apparently."

"Oh, someone told you?" Shallowtail straightens up. "Because that actually reminds me, I was supposed to tell you that Heatherstar wanted to talk to you, but now I guess I don't have to."

"No," I say. I'm shaking my head, and turning for Heatherstar's den. "I feel like you did tell me, but I know that's wrong. But you did. You told me."

"Well, good luck." Shallowtail stands dejected.

I wander really slowly to Heatherstar's gloomy den and go straight inside instead of waiting for her like I usually would. "Tawnyfur," she says. "I'm glad you're here."

"Mom." I say.

Heatherstar's in the process of eating a squirrel. "Want to share?" She offers me.

"Okay," I say. I stoop to start nibbling this decimated squirrel with her. I realize I'm actually really hungry now that I didn't take those poppy seeds this time.

She turns in one spot in her den. "You look glum."

"I think I am." I say. "Glum, I mean. I think glum would finally be the accurate word to describe what I'm feeling."

"Tawnyfur, the Gathering's tonight." Heatherstar looks so somber, even strict. "If this Gathering doesn't go well diplomatically, this could be the end of the peaceful agreement we've maintained for over two generations now."

"I don't think it's our problem." I say. I'm staring deeply into the guts of the squirrel, tearing at it distantly with only the very tips of my claws. "How are you, mom? I feel like we don't really talk anymore, and you're always busy…"

"I am busy." Heatherstar says wryly. "You mind sharing some of that? It's my kill, after all."

"Yeah, take all of it." I mumble.

"I'm worried about this glum attitude of yours." She says.

"I know, I'm so glum." I'm shaking my head at the floor. I rub my paw into my face, and I squeeze my eyes shut really tight. "You know – I think I might have passed out or fallen at some point this evening, or I'm still passed out somewhere, and it's_ really _messing with my head."

"Well, you are prone to bouts of random sleep." Heatherstar remarks. "Which is a kind way of saying you're a little lazy."

"I thought you said you were worried at me."

"I am worried about you."

"Why?"

"Because you're unmotivated, you're withdrawn, you eat way more than you hunt, you don't like patrolling, or even heading to the borders, you sleep way too long, your apprentice has complained to my deputy about how poor her training is going, and most of all Tawnyfur, because of the way you talk."

"You know what." I say. I get to my feet. "I don't know why you just talk to me like this, mom. You say you want me to come see you, and then you have this proposition for me to keep me out of battle that's really just a means of telling me that I'm such a disappointment to you, but really you want me to come see you so you can remind me how I'm so unmotivated and withdrawn and fat."

"Good StarClan, Tawnyfur. Settle down. Sit down."

"No." But I sit down.

Heatherstar regards me for a little while, with the squirrel cooling on the sand beside her, and then tilts her head to one side. "How did you know I planned to propose you stay out of the war?" She meowed.

"Because I have this really bad feeling I already had this conversation with you." I say desperately. I nod, grimly, at the floor. "Yeah, we definitely already talked about all this. And how you hope I choose to fight and choose the good of this Clan but you know I won't, because I'm a_ failure _and a _disappointment_, but you don't want me to _resent _you, which – let's face it, mom. Who cares if I resent you. Okay? You don't."

Heatherstar is shaking her head at me, all baffled and a little offended. "Where is this all coming from now? How did you know all this? I was trying to do you a favor – a favor for my daughter, who I love, and want to protect, and don't want to see die needlessly in battle! Does that make me such a bad cat?"

"Well, why didn't you say that part the first time?!"

_"What_ time?"

Heatherstar is totally incredulous. I'm staring at the inside of my squeezed-shut eyelids. She puts her paw on my chest. "Tawnyfur." She says, softly. "Why don't you have some dinner and get ready for the Gathering?"

I get up like I'm numb. "Okay." And I stagger out of her den on stiff, dead limbs.

I don't know what's going on with me. I can't believe how bad I feel. I guess you could always say I've been a bit of a downer for most of my life – well, the cats who know me would probably say, including my own mother and Clan leader – but I've never felt anything like this. This is – emptiness. This is the emptiest I've ever felt. Like I'm watching all meaning drain out of the things around me, the very motions of my life. Maybe even reality, even. I'm thinking very seriously now of heading to the warriors den to just turn in early, skip the Gathering and end this Dark Forest-level horror that seems to have taken over my life.

But before I can go crash out, walking against the crowded lines of cats preparing to leave for the Gathering, tail dragging in the dirt, Shallowtail appears at my side. "Tawny!" She's saying. "I've been waving at you, Tawn. What are you doing? Come eat with us."

"Okay," I mutter, in a tiny little voice. I follow Shallowtail to the fresh-kill pile. She keeps having to slow her pace to keep up with me. And then she flounces down beside Sunwing. They're as adorable as their kids will probably be. I stand awkwardly over the fresh-kill pile.

"So what did Heatherstar want?" Shallowtail asks.

"Motherly stuff." I say.

I feel the tap of a tail on my shoulder behind me, and I know it's Brackenclaw without having to look. He lowers his eyes, his whiskers twitch invitingly. "Hey Tawnyfur."

"Hey…Brackenclaw." I say. I move away from him and his tail.

"Are you looking forward to the Gathering?" he asks with a purr. He stoops to pick up a vole.

"Yeah – you know what I am, is hungry. I'm really, really hungry." I'm saying very loud. "It turns out, when you spend your whole evening_ not_ taking a bunch of poppy seeds, you get really hungry. And so…"

"Have this one." Brackenclaw drops the vole at my feet. He beams at me.

I stop my rant mid-sentence, and sit awkwardly to bite into the vole with a soft crunch.

Crunch.

My neck snapping against the protrusion of the fallen tree's old branch. Crunching. Crunch.

I died.

The vole drops out of my slack mouth. The entire ground beneath me sort of moves, or shudders, and I struggle to stay on all four paws. I sit all the way back from the fresh-kill pile, the vole, my friends.

"Tawnyfur?" Shallowtail asks. "You okay?"

I spring to my feet. I've got to get out of here. I'm pretty sure I'm going to puke. I keep hearing this crunch in the back of my ears. Crunch, crunch. At first I'm heading for the warriors den, but then I change my mind and get out of camp. Puke is coming. It's happening. Better to throw up in the woods somewhere than in someone's nest. I spy the puddle I was drinking out of and looking at myself in earlier. I throw up my guts into its filmy surface, and everything is wrecked. It floats listlessly, stained with the contents of my hurl. I'm bent before it, heaving for breath, nursing a trickle of drool, watching my vomit floating around this stupid puddle.

"Tawny!" Shallowtail calls behind me. She suddenly kneels beside me. Someone else eases me into a sitting position, sturdy paws. Sunwing and Brackenclaw. The string of drool takes a long time to separate from the puddle, and then its trailing halfway down my chest while they all look at me. I'm panting like crazy, StarClan, I can't breathe. I might throw up again. "Tawny, what's going on?" Shallowtail begs.

"Do you think there's something weird about this puddle–" I'm gesturing at it, but I accidentally stick my paw in it doing so. More puke. You can smell it. "Like, does this whole spot right here seem weird to you guys?"

"Well, it has puke in it," Sunwing says, but they can all sense my urgency. You can tell. "Are you doing okay?"

"I feel really really sick," I'm telling all of them, mostly with my eyes trained into Shallowtail's.

"Did you eat something bad?"

"No, not like that sick – I mean I know I just threw up but not like that sick – it's like I can't remember what I was doing before this night, I mean I can't remember how I got here, but then other stuff is really clear like I'm reliving it." I nod grimly. "I think I died."

"You died?" Shallowtail asks.

"I think I died crossing the tree to the Gathering, and now I'm dead."

"Tawn, you're not dead." She rubs my paw with her paw. My puke paw. Now that's a friend. She meets my eye with a steely face. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah." I decide. I manage a deep breath. "Yeah, I'm okay, I'm going to be okay."

"Okay." Shallowtail gives me a little breathing room.

"Are you still coming to the Gathering?" Brackenclaw asks.

"Yeah." I say. "I bet cats have already been leaving. We better go."

Brackenclaw stays in step with me as we start after where the overwhelming scents of ShadowClan are heading. We fell quite a bit behind while I was puking and throwing up by the puddle. I'm trying to focus on my feet walking to stay grounded and maybe not freak out again, but this annoying tom keeps brushing against me and vying for my eye contact. It's like I didn't just throw my guts up and have a total breakdown a few heartbeats ago.

"So," Brackenclaw finally says when I won't look at him. "Shallowtail said that she wanted all of us to go climb trees after we get back."

"Yeah, I know."

"Oh…you already know? How?"

"I don't know."

"Did she tell you?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I think it would be fun. It sounds exciting. I'd like to watch you climb some trees. I want to see if you're as strong as you look."

"No." I say. I stop walking and round on him. "I'm not strong. I'm going to make it to that fallen tree, and I'm going to try and cross, and I'm going to fall and snap my neck and die while you watch."

"Are you still on about that?" He looks cross; he flattens his ears back. Oh, of course he's cross. Why are some of these toms just so easy to bother? "If you don't want to climb trees with me then just tell me."

"It's not about you!" I almost caterwaul. "It is not! About! You! Brackenclaw! I'm dead! I'm dead!"

"I thought you liked me." He snarls. "Last week you made it seem like you liked me. At the lake. I caught a fish for you."

"I don't like you!" I call. "I don't like you at all!" Everyone else has gone ahead, it's just the two of us behind now. "I never told you that before because I thought I was supposed to be nice and act a certain way and secure you as a mate, or _something,_ but I don't want that! I don't want any of that, and nobody listened to me try to say that when I was alive, so maybe they'll hear me yelling it into their faces when I'm dead!"

"You_ suck_." Brackenclaw spits at me. "I always knew you were this stuck-up." He turns around and then takes off after our Clanmates at a run.

"Well – you know what?" I yowl after him. "You know what – you're not that good at fishing!"

I'm answered by a ringing clap of silence, the flickering of bats, the curiosity of invisible owls in the trees around us.

The trees around us? Well. I can climb trees. Brackenclaw's right about that much. He's such an idiot. I want to barf again or something. Why is this bumming me out so much? Well, I'm going to have to deal with him tomorrow. I'm going to have to deal with Shallowtail and Sunwing tomorrow, too. Shallowtail will really want to know why I ripped Brackenclaw to verbal shreds, and Brackenclaw will be doing everything in his tiny power to let me know what a supple shot I missed with him, and Sunwing will need answers too, a sort of go-between because Brackenclaw is his best friend.

Fox-dung. And there's me ripping my mom a new one in her den earlier on, too. She's definitely going to need to address that with me. Address it. Everything's got to be this Clan leader business with her. She's really not even my mom anymore. It would have been so much better if things had gone the way they did the first time. Letting my mom roll all over me with her proposition to keep me out of war, getting comfortably docile and doped out on those poppy seeds, actually getting along with my friends, heading to the Gathering with them…and now I'm not even going. Now I'm alone in ShadowClan territory.

But last time I went to the Gathering with my friends, and I died. So I can't go to the Gathering. I'm not going to face that tree again. Whatever happened to me, it's not like I can go back to the first night and have that one instead of this one. I'll just have to face tomorrow and let things fall how they will.

Trees, though. I decide I'll climb a tree way down at the shore, close to the island, and watch the Gathering from there. I prowl for quite a while along the murky, licking shore, trying to keep my paws out of the water. I really hate getting wet. It doesn't work for me. Even rain. If it's raining, that means it's bedtime.

Once I decide I'm close enough, and narrowly toying the border of RiverClan territory, I find an enormous oak tree curling high into the sky, and I hook my claws into the old, supple bark, and claw my way as high as I can. I climb and climb. Stupid Brackenclaw wanting to see me climb trees. So gross. At the very top of the tree, I've really got to dig my claws in because there's a bit of a breeze and I've got to be this high up to see the island and witness the Gathering. I see WindClan has already arrived. The Clan cats are sitting in these rigid, meticulous rows, not moving, not mixing, and a few of them flank the edge of the fallen-tree entrance, like they're guarding it. StarClan. What is Mousestar doing with that Clan? Maybe Heatherstar is right that it's time for war.

ShadowClan is on their way over the tree bridge now. Heatherstar leading the way, her head proud, her deputy in tow. They all cross together. All of a sudden, I remember the ThunderClan tom. The smoky tom. I get a punch feeling in my gut, this deep wrench of longing. StarClan, that stupid tom. He got under my fur. From here, I can see the dark mass of ThunderClan, but I can't pick him out.

ShadowClan has finished crossing to the island. It's ThunderClan's turn now. It's like I can finally breathe. Like I was holding my breath really tight this whole time. I suppose if my whole Clan is over the tree, and I'm not down there to cross and repeat that violent death that happened to me earlier, things are okay. I'll just deal with everything in the morning and we can all move on from this like it never happened.

At the end of ThunderClan's line, I see the last few cats crossing. Next up is my smoky tom. It's him. Even from this far away, he's gleaming. His pelt is practically silver. When I'm up there watching, and I see him approach the trunk of the tree, I get this horrible, ripping, shredding feeling that if he steps onto the wood, the same thing will happen to him that happened to me.

Everything kind of goes cold. That feeling again; that all meaning has drained from reality.

I yowl into the night as loud as I possibly can.

"HEY!"

My cry is so loud, it echoes off something and comes back to me. I see the tom stop, like miraculously, he heard me. I take a huge breath to yowl again, and when I do I lose my footing on the tree's highest spindly branches, and all of them give way beneath me.

I crash all the way down the tree, whacking into leaves, snapping branches, cracking, crunching against wood, and then the lowest branches give way to a long fall into a craggy rocks lining the shore, onto which my entire body descends with a crunch so loud the stars can hear it. And then everything is blood.

Ugh.

The night before a Gathering.

Everyone always loses their minds about it, but I'm here staring at my reflection in a rain puddle and wondering if I can make myself throw up so I don't have to go.

All of a sudden I _am_ throwing up. I'm puking like crazy. I turn away from the puddle and I puke even more. StarClan, it's everywhere. I think I'm going to die in a puddle of my own puke for a moment there. But then it stops, and I get to my feet so fast I nearly faint, and I stamp to the camp entrance. There's some stupid thicket stuck in my fur or something. This time, I'm the one who nearly collides with one of two warriors bursting out the other way.

"Hey, Tawnyfur!" Briarmouth says to me. "You okay?" He gives me a friendly old tail-swish. "You want to go grab something to eat with us?"

"No." I shove him out of the way. I fall into camp. My leg hurts. Where is Shallowtail? Oh – there she is. "Tawny! Tawnyyy!" She's calling.

She skids to a stop in front of me, trembling about, wiggling with excitement, slapping me with her tail. "Tawn!" She says. "You look like someone threw crowfood on you! Not like–"

"You." I say. I point my entire claw at her, and it cuts her off outright. She's frozen. "Is this a joke to you? Do you think this is funny?"

"What?" Shallowtail literally backpeddles over herself. "I was totally joking, you don't look like someone threw crowfood on you."

"Oh no," I say very loud. "Oh no, no, no, no, no. I am not going to play with you like this. I am not going to play with_ anyone_ like this, period, okay? I am going to figure out – what in_ StarClan_ is _happening_ to me – and I'm going to…!"

I look around the entire spot my body stands, the circle of the camp surrounding me, and how the thronging of cats around me have taken notice of me yowling at Shallowtail and interrupting an otherwise mellow, yet anticipant, evening. Most of them have gone silent to listen and watch me. Never in my life have I attracted this much attention On her part, Shallowtail is staring blink at me. Outright incredulous.

"What are you _talking _about?"


End file.
